Read Online Summertime by Raffaella Barker - Free Book Online

expensive. Last week I had an ad hoc underwater garden and lots of nice places for the ducks. This week, although the rain has stopped, and the blue sky is like a clear conscience, the scene at ground level is frightful to behold. At the suggestion of Simon, who couldn’t resist popping in for a bit of bossing on his way to a potato conference, I have hired a pump to suck all the unwanted water out of my garden. The pump arrives, a malevolent mound of grey metal and rubber reminding me powerfully of the rabbit intestines Lowly and Rags left in the kitchen this morning.
    It is delivered on an unnecessarily large lorry, while I am trapped on the telephone, unable to suggest a fitting place for it to be dumped. The driver heads unerringly across the lawn, the only part of the garden looking remotely nice, and dumps the pump in a bush as far away from the flood as it is possible to be in this garden. He then reverses back to the gate, not covering his tracks, and drives off, leaving the lawn decorated with four bolts of herringbone-tweed indentation. Giles and I, assisted by The Beauty in her red mackintosh and bare feet, very excited because she thought the pump was the Teletubbies’ Noo Noo, manage to work out how to turn the thing on, and wrestle with its stinking tubes, dragging them to reach a corner of the flooded knot garden. Flick the switch to start the suction programme and am suddenly in a mudbath.
    Jump about shrieking.
    â€˜Oh, my God. Oh, damn. Giles, quick, it’s the wrong way, it’s pumping out, not in! Buggering hell, I’m filthy.’ Am indeed coated with darkest gunge, but find it strangely liberating, so stop whingeing and get on with trying to angle the pump correctly. The Beauty capers about falling into mud and laughing while trilling her new set of swear words, ‘Damn, damn and bugger, bugger. Oh my God.’
    â€˜Oh my
word,’
I correct her, automatically. She shootsme a filth-coated look and repeats, ‘OHMIGOD’ in a football chant over and over again. Giles is writhing about with the pipe, like Hercules with the Hydra, or was it Pericles? Just cannot remember anything any more. Never mind, it is something to ask Hedley Sale when we next bump into him.
    Wonderful gurgling and squelching sounds indicate that Giles has vanquished the wrong flow, and the knot garden lake begins to subside. Giles and I, both resembling Fungus the Bogeyman in skin colour and scent, stand over the pump, fascinated, as it vacuums up the water.
    â€˜Is this what it would be like to work in a sewage plant?’ asks Giles, and I nod.
    â€˜Yes, I suppose so, but without the smell.’
    â€˜Cool,’ he says, and I wonder whether I should be encouraging him in a more white-collar direction.
    Later
    Felix zooms up to the window of my study where I have just written the first sentence of the day, extolling the joys and virtues of shopping malls.
    â€˜Mummy, quick, the pump is thirsty, it’s run out of water. I think it’s going to be sick.’
    Jump up, delighted to have a valid reason to escape.
    â€˜Gosh, well done for noticing, Felix, I’d forgotten all about it. Let’s go and have a look.’ Follow him roundto the knot garden, where a high-pitched whining accompanies a lot of smoke rising from the pump. Just as we reach the machine, the whining falters and drops rapidly in pitch to nought. An ominous silence ensues, broken by the bustling arrival of The Beauty and her pram.
    â€˜Look, Mummy, it’s broken.’ She points at the back of the pump, and a crack from which a treacle-dark ooze of water bleeds.
    April 13th
    Driving to the dentist on a glittering spring morning, we woosh through the puddles making the car even more disgustingly filthy than it already is, but delighting The Beauty, who drums her feet against my seat back and shrieks, ‘Faster in the river, Mummy, faster right now.’ We do ‘faster right now’ with